The Fargo Forum’s Patrick Springer has an extremely misleading report on a supposed “glitch” in the funding formula for the Outdoor Heritage Fund. The formula dedicates a portion of oil tax revenues to the fund up to a maximum of $15 million per year, and $30 million per biennium. As things stand now with oil…

As I write this I am reminded how much I enjoyed the North Dakota outdoors. From hunting for Mule Deer around Hettinger to shooting ducks over decoys near Finley I had some wonderful times. Walking the hills near Beach for sharp tails or watching my dog retrieve pheasants down at Hague I and my boys…

Reading outdoors reporter Brad Dokken’s column in the Grand Forks Herald today, you’d get the sense that certain legislators were trying to ban Ducks Unlimited and Pheastants Forever from participation in a newly-created conservation fund. In fact, Dokken states that explicitly: The bill Dalrymple signed laid out guidelines for the advisory board, but the House…

According to opinion editor Tom Dennis at the Grand Forks Herald, what higher education in North Dakota needs is Commission on Higher Education Governance that will report to the legislature how higher education should be governed. Of course, North Dakota has already tried this. In 1999 the Roundtable on Higher Education was formed. In 2000…

Today the House took up amendments to SB2242. Rep. Todd Porter, who sponsored HB1278 which has already been passed by the governor, introduced amendments to this bill after it became clear that some of the special interest groups named in his legislation to a board to advise the appropriations made it clear they’d likely pursue…

The governor may have signed a bill creating a $30 million per-biennium continuing appropriation for a conservation fund, but the controversy over the fund continues as the Bismarck Tribune reports. Rep. Todd Porter is still pushing amendments which would strip three special interests named specifically to the board advising the fund from the bill’s language,…

The North Dakota Senate today passed a bill to create an “outdoor heritage” fund. As amended, the bill puts a portion of oil tax revenues (capped at $15 million per year and $30 million per biennium) into a fund managed by the State Industrial Board with advice from a board of appointees from various special…

The North Dakota Senate today debated SCR4027, introduced by Senator Tyler Axness, which is a different version of legislation creating an outdoor heritage fund introduced by Rep. Todd Porter in the state House. Conservation groups have been trying to kill Rep. Porter’s bill on the grounds that it doesn’t give them a large enough continuing…

The dynamics around legislation to create an Outdoor Heritage Fund have taken a turn to the interesting. Last year an initiated measure to create the fund which would have no cap on revenues, and no oversight from the state’s elected leaders, was kept off the ballot by petition fraud perpetrated by a group of NDSU…

In the first half of the legislative session the North Dakota House passed a bill, HB1278, to create the Outdoor Heritage Fund. The idea came from a ballot measure that was derailed by petition fraud last summer. It would create a panel of special interest groups that would decide how to spend $30 million in…